Free The Two Deaths of Senora Puccini by Stephen Dobyns Page A

Really he was a boy, hardly more than fifteen, and he seemed extremely nervous. Faint patches of black whiskers spotted his face like dark islands on a pink sea. He was quite thin and awkward and wore a black suit that was too small for him. His large pink hands extended from the sleeves like skinned rabbits. He looked very much like one of the boys at my orphanage, a boy who has faithfully listened to me read every Sunday for at least eight years. They had the same thin face and narrow brow, the same unruly shock of black hair. After serving us each a dozen oysters, the boy took a bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and looked at it doubtfully. Removing the wire, he began to twist off the cork as if twisting a screw top.
    â€œNot so fast,” said Dalakis, “You’ll get it all over yourself.”
    The boy thrust the bottle away from him and at that moment the cork exploded with a loud pop and ricocheted across the room. Champagne began spewing out of the bottle onto the floor. Malgiolio reached forward with a glass and then another as the boy stood looking confused. Abruptly, the door to the hall opened quickly and the lieutenant glanced into the room. Seeing our little party, he retreated.
    Dalakis burst out laughing. “He thought it was a gunshot.” He had a low laugh like someone banging on the bottom of a metal drum. The boy was also grinning. But the speed with which the lieutenant came to the door impressed me, and a few minutes later, when they decided they needed another bottle, I opened it myself and the cork made no noise at all.
    Dalakis was a very hearty eater. Watching him made me remember those films showing bears scooping grubs from a dead stump or tearing into a honeycomb. In no time, his smiling mouth was shiny with lemon juice and horseradish and juice from the oysters. As he ate, he made small contented noises, sighs that were close cousins to the grunt. Glancing at him, I saw there were gray cat hairs on the jacket of his brown suit.
    Malgiolio, on the other hand, ate almost furtively, positioning himself with his elbows on either side of his plate, both to protect it and to make no unnecessary movements. He was also very methodical and moved his hands with such speed that all I could think of was a conveyor belt. Although Dalakis made several remarks on the quality of the champagne and the oysters, Malgiolio hardly spoke until his plate was empty.
    As for myself, my diabetes and occasional ulcers have caused me to so regulate my diet that I have become no friend to food. I rarely eat out or eat in the company of other people. Indeed, I find something almost disgusting in watching my fellow creatures insert soft globs of animal tissue and vegetable matter into their open mouths, then chewing and smacking their lips as they make a sound closely resembling that of a boot being extracted from thick mud. Another phrase of Diogenes came to mind: “If only I could free myself from hunger as easily as from desire.” Sometimes I have thought that our sole purpose on earth was to produce excrement for a perverse god who uses it as fertilizer for his beloved garden. But I do not mean to be antisocial. I enjoy the company of my friends and even ate several oysters before letting Dalakis and Malgiolio divide my remaining nine or ten between them.
    When he had finished, Dalakis leaned back and glanced around the room as if he might try nibbling it as well. In the bright light of the chandelier, I happened to notice his hands. Even though his wife deserted him many years before, he still wears his wedding ring, which has grown into his finger much in the way a wire can be embedded into the tree it surrounds. Turning to me, Dalakis put his right hand on my shoulder. “You know, Batterby, I heard a story recently about a writer that might interest you.”
    â€œOh?” I said somewhat pessimistically, afraid that I’d hear about someone who had experienced great good fortune